#fossil birds

[makairodonx]

Color pencil impression of Vegavis iaai, a prehistoric cousin of modern ducks and geese that lived around 68-67 in the Late Cretaceous of what is now Antarctica

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

We NEED more Extinct Cenozoic Bird Content!!!!!

Dinosaurs didn't stop at 66mya!!!

Birds didn't magically appear today out of thin air!!!!

They went through tons of evolution and there are so many cool extinct kinds, not just recent ones, but throughout the Cenozoic!!!!

AND BARELY ANYONE DRAWS, DEPICTS, OR TALKS ABOUT THEM

ITS A CRIME

A CRIME, I SAY

Conflict of Interest Report: I study some of them for my job

Should I make an art/writing/etc challenge or something? Fossil Bird November? Idk

[arminreindl]

Harrisonavis, the French Flamingo

For various reasons I procrastinated wrapping up my Wikipedia work on flamingos (Phoenicopteridae), but I finally had the motivation to finish the final species on my list, Harrisonavis croizeti.

Harrisonavis was a genus of flamingo from the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene of central France ( Saint-Gérand-le-Puy), first described in 1852 as Phoenicopterus croizeti based on a nearly complete skull, a rarity for fossil flamingos which are typically only known from assorted leg material. Although now considered a distinct genus, this early assignment did make sense given that the skull was remarkably similar to modern flamingos of the Phoenicopterus genus.

Alas the skull was lost and since fossil flamingo skulls are so hard to co...hang on they found an upper bill....and two parts of a lower bill...and the upper bill of a juvenile....and a nearly complete cranium. Yeah, turns out Harrisonavis has all the luck its relatives lacked and has gotten several referred specimens preserving the skull material. These fossils show two ironic things. 1) It is very similar to modern flamingos 2) It also differs subtly enough to actually make a difference.

Sounds weird but hear me out. Basically, it already has the needed parts to be a filter feeder, which is pretty obvious since you don't develope this kind of skull just for the hell of it. The bill is curved, the lower side deep to make room for a large tongue and the upper bill has a central keel where the lamellae can attach to (which later filter water). However, the curvature of the bill is rather weak, the lower bill not all that deep and the maxillary keel is shallow. All of this indicates that while already filter feeding, Harrisonavis was not as good at it as modern species. It does show one thing tho. The greater flamingo type skull has been around for approximately 20 million years and seems to represent the ancestral condition, which only later became the bulbous beak seen in the genera Phoenicoparrus (see below) and Phoeniconaias.

As said before, Harrisonavis  was found at Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, which seems to represent a complex of lake environments from the Oligocene and Miocene. Far as I've seen, its hypothesized that these lakes underwent cycles of wet and dry conditions, with the dry conditions in particular leading to evaporation, increased salinity and the brackish water favored by flamingos. Harrisonavis wasn't the only flamingo from the region either. Fossils also show the presence of members of the Palaeolidae (perhaps a topic for a future deep dive), specifically Palaelodus ambiguus and Megapaloelodus goliath (maybe Palaelodus goliath?). Illustrations below by @alphynix for Palaeolodus, Scott Reid (@DinosaurDrawing) / Twitter for Megapaloelodus and artbyjrc - Hobbyist, Digital Artist | DeviantArt for Harrisonavis itself.

And below you can see the difference between the Wikipedia page as it was originally compared to the new version following my brief dive into the literature, tho I admittedly relied mostly on the comprehensive paper by Torres et al. 2015 that went over the new cranial remains and dealt with the older stuff as well.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

artwork by @thewoodparable

What's THIS Dinosaur????

Pulchrapollia

Psittacopes

Vastanavis

Eozygodactylus

Primoscens

Zygodactylus

Halcyornis

Voting ended onFeb 22, 2024

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Do you have any favourite bird fossils?

I actively study fossil birds so that's actually really hard for me to pick just one :') like... all of them

this one of Nahmavis from Green River has always been one of my favorites though

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

pick an extinct Cenozoic Dinosaur to have persisted until today

Any Terror Bird

Any Pelagornithid (Psuedotoothed bird)

Elephant Birds

Moa

Adzebills

Teratorns

Dodos

Dromornithids (Mihirungs) (or Gastornis)

Sylviornis

The Parrots of Prey (Halcyornithids et al)

Heracles

Great Auk

Voting ended onAug 26, 2023

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Basal Anseriformes from the Early Paleogene of North America and Europe

We describe nearly complete skeletons of basal Anseriformes from the Latest Paleocene to the early Eocene of North America and Europe. Colle

Welp, I am finally published! Say hello to some new birds from the Paleogene!!!

[merelygifted]

Largest penguin ever discovered weighed a whopping 340 pounds, fossils reveal | Live Science

Researchers in New Zealand have unearthed fossils from two previously unknown ancient penguin species. One of the new species is the largest penguin ever discovered.